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At a rock/metal night at a club on Friday. It was totally packed. I overheard two dudes saying they felt a bit out of it as they were the only guys with short hair. Well, they were exaggerating - there were one or two other dudes with short hair too - but yeah, the vast majority of us had long hair.
Ha! Love it when that happens! :)
The next day my g/friend and I had a pub lunch at another town. Our waiter had a long ponytail and I swear he gave us much friendlier service than the regular clientele.
We went on to meet a few friends at a pub where a rock band were playing. I overheard (amazing what you overhear in pubs/clubs!) an old guy talking to his wife in a corner: "I had long hair once". His wife looked at him fondly and commented, "It's back in fashion now" and added, looking sadly at his bald head with a horseshoe of short white hair, "But I think your head-banging days are over, dear". He gave a wry smile. Ahhhh. But at least he WAS a long hair once.
Let's make the most of our awesome long hair while we can - and feel sorry for those who have never even tried it. You only live once!
Damon
What was it that Tennyson once said? "'Tis better to have had long hair and lost it than never to have had long hair at all!" ;)
Damon
Thanks, Damon, for your post...
It is so true what you say - to say we have done this thing, having long hair and enjoying the experience of it all - but, it is painfully slow to get there... this awkward stage of growing my hair out - it takes as long as it takes, but some days I look at myself in the mirror, and I wonder seriously what I am doing - and how it takes so much patience to accomplish. For a guy who has always been meticulous about the way I look, this awkward time is painful. I ignore it most of the time as I keep my eye on my goal - but as my wife and I talked about - this is difficult to get through -
but posts like yours keep me going - I can hardly wait for the feeling of being a true long hair - not sure when I get to claim that for myself - and hoping I'll make it there - but, for today - encouraged...
No worries. You'll get there. Don't wash your hair too often (that just makes it fluff up and spring out all the more). Leave it a few days. Hair always looks its best a day or so after you wash it.
One day you'll suddenly find it doesn't spring up so much; the weight is holding it down. And it'll be resting on your shoulders. That'll happen sooner than you think - just be patient. ;)
Damon
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Hi Damon,
I loved reading this post! Very cool to hear the waiter gave you all great service! I must disagree with the lady though. Long hair on men never went out of fashion! And I do agree with you and Tennyson! We only go around once in life! Long locks forever! Rock on\m/!
Ted
Haha! I think she was talking about mainstream fashion. Yeah, long hair has always been popular among metal fans and a few others - but now here in the UK it has become quite mainstream. About time! Long hair looks a thousand times better than short hair!
Glad you agree with my deliberate misquote of Tennyson. He was wittering on about something called "love" in the original but I'm sure he really meant long hair!
Damon
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we could live every day as a concert, being surrounded by other longhairs lol.
On a side note, last weekend I went to an all day festival in Baltimore to see Joan Jett, Clutch, Jimmies Chicken Shack, Reverend Horton Heat, and some others. Unfortunately, Dropkick Murphys and a couple other "Irish" "punk" bands were there, so along with seeing a lot of long hair and a lot of cool, multicolored short punky hair, there were a lot of high-and-tight having frat boy asshats there too. Luckily, they stayed away from all of the good bands, and prettymuch just drank themselves stupid for 10 hours until Dropkick Murphys went on. The frat boys were there, but I managed to barely see any of them, thankfully.
Haha! You'd go deaf! :)
I can totally relate to your festival experience. I've never heard of Dropkick Murphys (just googled 'em) but I don't think I'd like their music much or their fans. At the Reading Festival recently my mates and I were into NIN, Foals, Editors, Tame Impala ... but a totally different crowd turned up to see Eminem. Ditto for Jake Bugg (excuse while I retch). But hey, each to their own I guess.
One of my best friends (in long hair, black nail polish and eyeliner) told us that some short-haired losers called out to him: "Hey, are you a girl, mate?" My friend calmly pointed out to them that since they referred to him as "mate" it seemed unlikely that they were really confused about his gender. But that level of intellectual nicety appears to have floated straight over their heads. I gather they sort of mumbled incoherently and then wandered off to find someone else they could try to ridicule.
Damon
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Ah Dropkick Murphy's, wonderful band :)
... while I've loved all kinds of music all my life (I'll be 47 soon) I've never really been much of a concert goer until about 5 years ago. And for some strange reason, I never gave much thought to what the fans of all my favorite acts looked like, until I started going to concerts.
I saw the Steve Miller Band in 2009 in Honolulu, and I was quite surprised to see lots young people there. There were lots and lots of longhairs there, too, both young and old. I think that's just about the biggest concentration of long haired guys I'd ever seen in Hawaii (in the 1960s, most Asian middle class boys had buzz cuts and I spent most of the 1970s in a private boys' school -- so nearly every boy I saw in my childhood had short hair). BTW, that was a really great concert. He played most of my favorite songs, including a stunning 15-plus minute version of Fly Like An Eagle that brought down the house. Jesse Colin Young opened.
There were some longhairs at America, Three Dog Night, and Crosby/Nash as well, although the crowds were much older. At the Crosby/Nash (Stills and Young weren't there, unfortunately) concert, the most enthusiastic applause was when they performed "Almost Cut My Hair". So, I'm guessing there were many former longhairs in the audience :) David Crosby still has shoulder length hair, too.
At Elton John's 2011 concert, I was definitely in the minority. But his playing was first rate and the crowd was friendly, enthusiastic and in great spirits. I really enjoyed that one, too. Great selection of songs; Elton John's music was a fixture of my childhood in the 70s. My sister and her friends were big fans too back then.
In April 2012, I saw Yes. That was a really interesting one. Like I said, I never really gave much thought to what fans of various bands looked like. My first big exposure to Yes was in college in the rural Midwest. I often used to hear Fragile, The Yes Album, Close to the Edge, Going For The One, etc. blasted at full volume from dorm room stereos, echoing across the campus on warm spring days. So I subconsciously assumed that Yes fans must look like the many of the Bohemian / hippie types that populated our campus. What I found was that the stereotypical Yes fan in Hawaii is a white collar 50-something haole male. I don't know what they looked like back in Yes' heyday, but today they're mostly clean-cut with short silvering hair.
But I enjoyed the concert even though Rick Wakeman and Jon Anderson are no longer with the group. (Anderson was first replaced by Benoit David, who I understand was terrible. David was eventually replaced by Jon Davidson.) Davidson, the new lead singer, has long blond hair. According to online comments, this group apparently has its up and down days ("I get up, I get down, I get up, I get down, I get up, I get down" as their immortal lyrics go :) and I was fortunate to catch them on one of their up days.
Yeah, you'll certainly see a concentration of dudes with long hair at rock gigs (the word "concert" is a bit old-fashioned here in the UK but gigs are the same thing really).
I've heard of old stuff like Elton John, Steve Miller Band, Crosby stills & Nash, America and so on of course but I'm not really familiar with their material. Not really my thing. I'm more into more modern music - although I love Gary Numan, Bauhaus and some other bands from the late 1970s onwards.
Also, I'm not all that much into metal or old-school rock (apart from really early stuff from the 1950s) - so it might seem surprising that I was at a "rock/metal night" at all! Most of my mates and I (what the general public might call goth, punk, emo or some other hideous term) are more into industrial, ebm, aggrotech, synthpop, etc. But since we know the DJ and he is also a fan, he always plays some of our music genre as well. ;)
Give me Rammstein, Combichrist, Das Ich, Mesh, VNV Nation, Hocico, Grendel, Unter Null, etc. and I'm in heaven. But my tastes are eclectic; I like some Kasabian, MCR, BFMV, Murderdolls, JEW, Kopek, Cage the Elephant (strangely!) and other things too. My g/friend is into 90s indie (some of which I also like) but I'm trying to bring her over to the dark side! :)
Damon
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"OLD"?!??
I consider pretty much everything from The Beatles (and actually even a little bit before them) to be new. I'll tell you what old is. When I was a kid, they were still playing Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Vera Lynn, The Andrews Sisters, Frank Sinatra, Xavier Cugat, etc. on mainstream radio:My own tastes are all over the map. When people ask me what kind of music I like, I don't know how to answer. I want to say "everything", but that's probably not quite true. Many people will glance at my collection or ask me list a few of my favorite bands and then instantly label me a "classic rock" person.
However, a lot of my music is stuff you don't hear on classic rock stations: Martha & The Vandellas, Peter Paul & Mary, Carl Orff, Marty Robbins, Cecilio & Kapono, Richard Wagner, Dave Brubeck, The Village People, Kalapana, just to name a few examples. Also, I don't care for everything that plays on classic rock stations.
My music library captures only a very small fraction of what I've been exposed to and like. Yet, in it you'll find northern soul, southern rock, classical, jazz, blues, rock-a-billy, country, metal, hip-hop, folk, funk, soft rock, hard rock, disco, psychedelic, progressive, glam, punk, New Wave, pop, reggae, alternative, Hawaiian, soul, just to name a few.
PS: Isn't Rammstein (it's one of the names there that I recognize) considered metal?
Nah, that music ain't "old". It's Jurassic! There were still dinosaurs roaming the planet in those days! :D
Most of my friends would regard any music before about 2000 or even 2008 as "old", and any music before about 1990 as "vintage" if not actually antique. That's not meant to be derogatory - far from it; some of that old music was awesome and will live forever - but time does move on. I personally happen to LOVE loads of really old music - particularly ancient tracks from the 1980s. They appeal to my consciously retro taste - but they ain't exactly modern and fresh anymore.
But hey, I like Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Vivaldi and they ain't exactly brand new either!
Yes, in so far as industrial is a subgenre. But I really meant the wider public perception of heavy metal as epitomised by subgenres such as thrash, death and black.
Come to think of it, Rammstein are getting a bit old-school too now; they formed way back in 1994! Time to roll out the zimmer-frames I think! :)
Damon
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